


Our Strength and All Our Sweetness

by x_los



Series: Walking Clothes Universe [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
Genre: Aftermath of a Case, Case Fic, Disguise, Disguised Sherlock Holmes, F/M, First Time, Genderswap, Pregnancy Kink, Queer Character, Queer Het, Queer Themes, Size Difference, Slow Burn, Story: The Adventure of the Red-Headed League, Victorian, Victorian Attitudes, Virginity, Virginity Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 23:04:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19840378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: A sequel to "Her Walking Clothes" and the Mouse answer to "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League".Since unmasking Basil's best disguise, Ratigan has been assiduously courting the detective. It's taken years, but Basil has grudgingly admitted him into her life. Unfortunately, being part of Basil's life inevitably involves getting wheedled into spending the night in a pitch-black vault under a bank, unable to speak, to prevent a crime Ratigan would have preferred to commit himself. Be that as it may, Ratigan has always found the rewards of meticulous planning and patience to be delicious.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The date of ACD's "Red-Headed League" is, per Dorothy Sayers, who would know better than Doyle, internally inconsistent. GMD continuity would also push this 1890 date later. I went with Doyle's date because if I ever did other stories in this universe/the bizarre Wimsey crossover I had in contemplation it'd be necessary to fix people's ages thus, but these are caveats that ought to be noted. 
> 
> This is a sequel to "Her Walking Clothes" and would be a prequel to "Wire in the Blood". But I don't think the later _necessarily_ follows on from this, and in fact had some ideas I really liked for a more extended and happier resolution.
> 
> I had some issues with this one, as did my first beta. So, I sat on it for 5ish years without lighting on any way of fixing those issues. Really it's so long it's silly to leave it as drawer-fic forever, even if I'm not vibing with it at the moment.

OCTOBER 1890

“Note for you, sir.” 

The waiter handed Ratigan a folded letter on a platter, and the Professor felt the familiar stir of anticipation. The paper was the deliberately unremarkable sort Basil carried in her pockets and used for correspondence. Thus, while it might be from anyone, it _might_ be--he took the note with thanks and turned it over--from her. And so it was--Ratigan grinned at the distinctive, slanting address. His own name, written hastily. He’d know that too-heavy, emphatic downward stroke on the spine of the R anywhere. It was as though Basil was trying to replicate the way she said his name in ink.

On opening the missive, the first thing that caught Ratigan’s attention was not its contents, but its unusual style. Basil seemed to have composed it on some queer, angled surface. What’s more, her stopping-and-starting pen had given her no little trouble, yet she’d not irritably exchanged it for another.

If Ratigan ran out now, he might catch Rose and ask her where Basil had sent this from. Their designated go-between since the beginning, that sometime-matchgirl now helped Mrs Judson out in the kitchen of Basil’s Baker Street apartments and did irregular duty as a page. But Rose wasn’t one to linger, and despite his longer legs, Ratigan knew from experience that he might waste some time chasing her. There again, Rose had a stubborn sense of responsibility, and of her position. She’d been lifted out of the gutter into what she called a proper line of work, and she intended to stay lifted. If Basil hadn’t said it was all right for her to tell Ratigan where she was, Rose would never venture beyond her brief and do so. Besides, like as not Basil, who was exacting if she’d time to be, had dispatched a messenger from wherever she was to her own home. In such a case, Rose would only have brought the letter on from there, and she would genuinely have no idea of her master’s whereabouts. 

Ratigan would simply have to play at being Basil and deduce the information for himself. He had, in recent years, become quite adept at applying the methods of the object of his attentions. But whereas Basil would have agonized over ink splatters, Ratigan gleefully cheated. He pulled out his diary (into which, with such purposes as this in mind, he habitually penciled any notable London concerts or lectures likely to attract the detective’s attention while perusing his evening paper). Sure enough, the famous human violinist Sarasate was playing at St. James’s Hall this afternoon--relatively near at hand as it happened. Thus in all likelihood Basil’s unusually awful penmanship reflected her having hastily scrawled a note in dim light before the performance began, propped up on the slanted banisters of the Hall’s rodent section. 

The note asked Ratigan to drop by Baker Street at ten o’clock that evening, suggesting that if he did so, he might hear a proposition to his advantage. Ratigan thought he could do rather better than that, and left the Bagatelle immediately. The diversion offered by a round of cards with his lieutenant was nothing to that promised by this imperious summons.

This would hardly be the first time Ratigan had managed to surprise Basil at a concert. Three years ago, when he’d started occasionally dropping in on her entertainments, Basil had found Ratigan’s ability to anticipate her pleasures incredibly irritating. That in itself had delighted him. By now she accepted Ratigan’s appearances with wry good humor, and deigned to discuss the program with him afterwards, if she had time. 

A quick cab, the purchase of a ticket and a rapid clamber up a set of steep stairs brought Ratigan into the gallery where, sure enough, he found an uncrowded matinee audience which included his fiancé. At least it included the woman he called his fiancé, who in turn called him an astounding variety of things--very few of which were flattering. Basil was hanging over the banister, just as Ratigan had expected. He took the unoccupied seat next to her, popping his hat under his chair. Basil’s eyes flickered over to him, her nose twitching in exasperated amusement. She spared his sudden appearance little more thought, and in a moment she was lost again. Basil’s rapt eyes glittered, her lips slightly parted as if the vibrations of that massive human instrument were traveling up through the balcony floor and into her bones, then spilling out of her small mouth. She slid back in her seat with a lowering glide of the bow, seemingly inexorably. 

Basil’s expression was at once intense and dreaming. It was well that they sat in the dark, and that only Ratigan was close enough to properly see her face. There was an unguarded softness to it when she listened to music. Basil seemed especially feminine at such moments. Her hand traced shapes in the air just above her lap--the ghost of a conductor’s baton, reminding Ratigan of the practitioner's knowledge that undergirded her enthusiasm. 

Ratigan stifled an urge to catch and kiss Basil’s hand, to pull her to him--her rapture clawed at his heart, made him want to possess the emotion, to have been its author. He was reconciled to (and, for the most part, he delighted in) the lengthy process of winning Basil’s trust and affection. The lady did deserve this state, nor would he love at lower rate. But then some slight action, some noise or gesture of hers, would stab him through with longing, and Ratigan would feel the deprivation of not having Basil _now_ quite keenly. Of having no real right to her or claim on her, of being totally unable to so much as, with due propriety, touch her hand--let alone make love to her. 

The first time he’d seen her thus absorbed, Ratigan had been taken aback, even somewhat alarmed by how different Basil had seemed from the mouse he knew. How alien, how womanly. Now he understood this as quite a part of her--perhaps another form of her defining intensity, or perhaps the vital underbelly of her clockwork intellect, a truth that lived under and through her daily disguises. This was the capacity for passionate feeling Ratigan had always admired in Basil, given reign. 

And she was justified in being so captivated. Sarasate turned himself to the somewhat unusual German program with a kind of ruthless sentimentality that choked and over-mastered resistance. Silently, Ratigan thanked Basil for the tip. When the last strains of the music died away, Basil, who’d been drawn by a rising note to perch on the edge of her chair and drape herself over the rail once more, gave a breathy exhalation and slumped back in her seat, looking dazed and spent. Ratigan had to look away before adding to the polite applause. 

Basil was dressed as a man, and so Ratigan didn’t offer her his arm. They navigated out of the hall, the other concertgoers affording his bulk and the range of his tail significant berth. Basil darted a quick, sour glance at him for taking up so much space, but she wasn’t above using the wake he created to descend the more quickly herself. 

“Thank you, my dear, for a most entertaining afternoon,” Ratigan said, brushing off his hat and nimbly twitching it back onto his head. Basil, left uncharacteristically gentle by the music, gave him an unguarded smile. She then coughed, came back to herself and jauntily positioned her own cap.

“I suppose you ascertained my whereabouts from my vile hand, in collusion with that wretched diary of yours?”

“Oh come now, Basil,” Ratigan chided, tsking and shaking his head. “Your hand is quite dainty. I’d be only too happy to kiss it, were our location less public or you otherwise attired. Besides,” he flicked his paw, “if you didn’t want company, you’d have taken a bit more care, wouldn’t you? After all,” he laced his fingers together, leaning down over Basil patronizingly, “you didn’t need me until late in the evening--you might certainly have waited until the concert had finished to send word.”

Basil rolled her eyes and didn’t dignify that with a response--probably because she could see the justice in his remark, and didn’t want to enter into the question. “I _suppose_ I might as well go into the particulars with you now, if you insist on being precipitous. Have you eaten? I thought to have a sandwich before I went in, but the Underground favored me with one of its more quixotic turns.” Basil’s nose scrunched in disapproval. “I hadn’t time to do more than send to Rose.”

Ratigan had not. After a brisk walk spent discussing the concert they arrived at Rules, because it was Ratigan’s turn, and because where possible he preferred to make meals generally, and meals with Basil in particular, into elaborate occasions rather than grim necessities to be dispensed with. Initially, whenever Ratigan could concoct a pretext that required them to meet, Basil had assigned a location at random (with no regard even for the quality of the cuisine) in order to give Ratigan no chance to introduce any possible contaminant into the meal. Having to eat, let alone woo, at some subpar chippy had wounded Ratigan deeply, but he’d plastered ingratiating smiles over his winces. It seemed to amuse Basil to torment him--there had been some absolutely appalling curries, and her ill-hidden smirks and demure appetite had given Ratigan the distinct impression that she’d managed to eat before coming. 

A year and a half ago, however, Basil had managed to see Ratigan trussed up and an inch away from a night in the cells--to be followed, unless he could legally or illegally manage to extricate himself, by incarceration and, very probably, hanging. Ratigan might have avoided this impasse by killing a guard at a crucial moment, but of course in his efforts to convince Basil that they might negotiate some accommodation, _that_ privilege had been the first thing to go. Ratigan had been in a vile humor, and Basil had been uncharacteristically quiet and grim. They’d been alone, awaiting the arrival of the police proper.

“Given the extent of your intelligence about the city’s criminal affairs you might be offered a trade, you know.” Basil had murmured, almost to pass the time. “In any case, I doubt it will avail you much to reveal my minor indiscretions.” Cross-dressing as she did was, after all, indeed a legal offense. Worse still, such an exposure--especially since Basil was unmarried, and could thus easily be suspected of sexual impropriety in conjunction with her masquerade--would destroy her reputation.

Ratigan had sneered. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’ve no intention of telling anyone your little secrets, my dear. I shouldn’t stoop to it if it’d save me from the drop.” Though there would certainly be a special bitterness in facing the block knowing that after everything, the woman he loved had done this to him--that this was how little she reciprocated his loyalty and esteem. But then she’d never asked for those tributes. His devotion to Basil wasn’t some shop-bought trade good, exchanged for its pennyworth of favors. Basil called his admiration forth by existing as herself. Her apathy was a _bitter_ pill, but no degree of it could alter his feeling, or diminish her.

Glancing over at Basil, he’d been taken aback to see surprise in her eyes. She’d thought his betrayal likely. That stung but hardly shocked him. It did gratify him a little to shake her poor opinion of him, even at this eleventh hour. And she was, apparently, uneasy with her role in his downfall. There was an edge of fretful sorrow in her drooping shoulders. It was hardly the grandiose mourning he might have hoped for, but at least Basil would _notice_ and in some way feel his end. 

Only a lucky chance had enabled the bound Ratigan to knock out the policeman when he entered the room with a vicious headbutt. Berzerker-fierce, Ratigan had called on all his native strength to shred the ropes and escape. Basil had reached out to hinder him, but there had been some catch in her movements--an instant’s delay, and he’d not wasted it. No doubt she had cursed herself for softness, but Ratigan had allowed himself to treat that lapse as a whisper of hope. 

Without Ratigan’s actual presence at the scene, it had been difficult to materially tie someone as powerful and connected as he was to the crime. Nascent efforts at bringing a case against him had broken down and eventually crumbled into slumbering ashes, like logs on the fire.

But something real had altered in the way Basil treated Ratigan. Before that encounter she’d made a point of calculatedly enraging him--he’d only realized this after the fact--with particularly vicious taunts, to see if he’d snap and try and brutalize her. There was a kind of civilized violence to their encounters as detective-and-criminal, but Ratigan’s temper was never far from the surface. Basil had wanted to know if she was safe from it, from him--if the potential for physical violence between them would extend beyond professional contexts, into the gray, common violence men did to women in domestic settings every day. Ratigan had always managed to compose himself, to reign himself in, and Basil’s estimation of him had increased accordingly. She’d ended her experiments grudgingly satisfied. When Ratigan had been in danger of losing his life, and at his most incandescently angry, he’d made no move to vindictively hurt her by revealing her secrets. He’d not used the threat of doing so to try and manipulate her. He’d scorned the very prospect. 

If Ratigan’s demonstrable control over his temper had impressed Basil, this later action had brought about a subtle sea change. For a given value of trust, Basil now trusted him. She’d begun allowing him to pay for half of their dinners out, to choose the restaurant, and had, with her own more modest means, bothered selecting decent establishments when it was her turn--even, seemingly, trying to impress him with the unusual establishments her intimate knowledge of the city had brought her into contact with. They’d become a kind of friends, capable of discussing their shared interests and, to some extent, the matter of their lives. 

Ratigan thought the delightful development somewhat hampered by the introduction onto the scene of Major David Q. Dawson. By all rights Basil should have made Ratigan, her devoted intellectual equal, who’d known her for years, her sole bosom companion. Instead she palled around with that chubby buffoon, offering him confidences he couldn’t appreciate and precious insights into her thinking that he seldom understood. 

Basil glanced at Ratigan over the menu. “Poor Dawson.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t deserve half your obvious scorn.”

Ratigan winced and smoothed his mouth, assuming a polite expression. “How did you know I was thinking of that--gentleman?”

Basil scoffed, snapping her menu shut. “It couldn’t be clearer. You’d a face like you were sucking on a lemon wedge. Know you though I do, I cannot ascertain precisely what led you to this juncture. But your otherwise-admirable composure always suffers a blow when thoughts of the Major occur to you.”

“Will he be joining us this evening?” Ratigan asked with insincere politeness.

Basil snorted. “With you along? I did conduct my initial investigations with Dawson, but ultimately this is more in your line. Besides, Marjorie’s sitting at home with a collicky infant, Dawson was understandably anxious to relieve her, and _not_ to be out at all hours.”

“What a pity he’s indisposed.” Ratigan’s expression of theatrical sorrow passed into disdain, and he flicked his menu closed with undue savagery. When Basil said she’d shared her secret with Dawson and his new wife, Ratigan had felt distinctly threatened--never mind that it was sensible for her to have a sympathetic doctor at the ready.

“I suspect you understand rather well why I value Dawson, and that the knowledge discomforts you. Dawson is my dear friend because he is loyal, a quality you also possess.” Basil leaned over and ticked his attributes off on her fingers. “He is fairly intelligent--don’t scoff, it’s beneath you. We can’t all be master criminals and theorists of European reputation. Finally, he is an exceptionally decent man. I rely on Dawson completely. This ultimate quality disturbs you, because you know yourself to lack it. It suggests I’d chose such substance over your impeccable style.” 

Ratigan gave her conclusions a dubious look. Basil continued, unshaken and unembarrassed.

“Now, as a writer, man and friend, Dawson complements my work. He is, however, also a _married_ man with a currently-collicky infant, and there was never anything other than fraternal love between us besides. I keep company with the two of you for quite different reasons. Your jealousy of Dawson and his continual tutting about you are equally tiresome.”

Ratigan was rather surprised Basil would refer to his interest in her so directly. Usually she was at pains to avoid even alluding to it. He didn’t know how to take her matter-of-fact treatment of the argument of their three years’ play. 

The waiter arrived and they broke to order, laying out their courses there and then. Her lip twisting with regret, Basil eschewed a first course and a third. She was inclined to slenderness, but if she gained any weight at all, her hips, buttocks and breasts became more prominent, and her sex more apparent. She kept to her diet with the strictness of a dancer in the corps. Ratigan, who indulged his sensual appetites like a hedon, regretted that the pleasures of someone he cared for should be thus restricted,. He was forever inducing her to try just the merest taste of his own potted shrimp or chestnut mousse. Ratigan suggested wine, but Basil shook her head. “I’m afraid we’ll need our heads clear for the evening’s work.”

“Other than accept Major Dawson into my bosom, you still haven’t told me what precisely you expect me to do.” Ratigan propped his elbows in the table and leaned in to better hear her, framing his face in his hands.

“Ah--therein lies a tale. Bear with me, it does wind ‘round, but I expect you’ll thoroughly enjoy the substantial element of the ridiculous.” Basil proceeded to outline the lamentable (and, as promised, very amusing) demise of the Red-Furred League, the poor taken-in pawnbroker’s loss of a steady additional wage, and that broker’s remarkably cheap assistant, who’d an acid scar across his face.

“Clay,” Rattigan breathed, clenching his hands in anticipation of wringing the brat’s neck.

“The very same!” Basil clapped her hands delightedly. “That up-and-coming Gentleman Criminal,” she laced the words with a certain amused irony, “who, I’ll warrant, is a presumptuous annoyance you’ll be glad to see the back of.” 

“Oh _excessively_ pleased, I assure you. And when you rapped the sidewalk--”

Basil nodded, enthused, leaning in closer. “Drum-hollow, exactly! The entire set-up--getting the pawnbroker out of the house every day with the promise of that money--was simply a contrivance that allowed Clay and his associate to dig a tunnel--”

“While Saxe-Coburg Square,” Ratigan interrupted with some excitement, “backs right up on to--”

“The Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank,” Basil interrupted right back, smacking her small fist on the table, “precisely!”

“They’ll have to do it tonight, or else why--”

“Dissolve the league, yes!” 

“Oh _Basil_ , I happen to know what makes that bank _especially_ worth burgling at the moment.” Ratigan wiggled his fingers with wicked delight. “Now, there was a shipment of French coinage some weeks ago--which I of course tracked for professional reasons--” 

“Ah,” Basil grinned, manic, as she waved her hand energetically and dismissively. “But if you’re thinking of going for the money, what could a few men carry off in one night, anyway? And how much more might it be worth to you to see that rising star Clay out of the picture? You like things neatly arranged. That showman Clay must be as grist in your instruments.” Basil toyed with a butter knife, apparently wanting a cigarette or some physical means of demonstrating how little she thought of the man. “He thinks a great deal of himself, but he isn’t nearly the criminal Mouseverton was.”

Ratigan acknowledged the implied compliment with a gracious nod as his first course arrived, pushing the plate towards the centre of the table so Basil could spear a forkful or two. Last Christmas, Ratigan had sent a basket of sheet music to Baker Street. At the bottom, there’d been a neat brown paper package containing enough evidence to convict Mouseverton for his role in a bungled robbery some years back, before he’d attained his current hands-off position as master blackmailer of the criminal world. It had killed two birds with one stone. Mouseverton had been something of a nuisance, even if his work had largely run alongside rather than at cross-purposes to Ratigan’s own. More importantly, Basil detested the blackmailer, and had never been able to pin a damn thing on him. 

The blackmailer might claim to be equally a foe to anyone with money and secrets, but it was women Mouseverton blatantly made hay of, women that, with a faux-Puritanical righteousness, he delighted in exposing and shaming. Mouseverton derived a deep, lascivious satisfaction from their humiliation, and had the nerve to call it ‘just business’. The stupid flirtations of one’s youth, any evidence of bucking against or chafing within a household economy that demanded women’s bodies in exchange for their basic security--Mouseverton devoured the scraps of girls’ lives, and bred fear in a world that could already be deeply unkind to ladies of any station. Basil might well fear for her own secrets, with a man like that in business. But over and above any direct personal concern, she _detested_ Mouseverton, the whole idea of him. 

With Ratigan’s information, Basil had contrived to have him arrested and his cache of secrets destroyed (burned en masse, by her own hand--she hadn’t looked at a single damned word of it). He’d been isolated and allowed to speak to no one whilst in prison. Fortunately his old misdeed had been a capital one. 

Basil’s cold contempt for Mouseverton’s particular brand of villainy gave Ratigan some pleasure. Basil had a fierce, governing sense of justice, rather than an unswerving allegiance to the law. She regarded criminals as individuals, and Ratigan knew she’d never regarded him in the light of Mouseverton--with the pure, disgusted loathing one reserved for a flesh-corrupting disease. 

“I thought I’d step over to Scotland Yard and let them know to wait with men at the bank entrance this evening--inside, where they can’t be seen from the road. They can square City and Suburban. Meanwhile, you might position Felicia near the pawn shop’s entrance, ready for your ring. You and I can lie in wait in the vault. I considered taking Dawson, a police officer and the bank manager with me. But why clutter the room with three men of varying degrees of usefulness, when I could take one supremely able fellow who shares my desire to see Clay reigned in?” Basil was at her most matey, and it amused Ratigan.

“You flatter me unnecessarily.” He dabbed his mouth with a napkin, having mostly consumed his meal while Basil explained everything between hurried bites of her own main course. “I’d already determined to attend any rendezvous you proposed.” 

And so Basil ran down to the Yard to explain the situation and secure assistance, setting the police to the dull task of attaining keys and permissions from the bank. Meanwhile Ratigan told his precious baby Felicia that they were going on a little job to help Mummy, wasn’t that nice? Felicia looked unimpressed, but then she always did. Ratigan had convinced himself that she too adored Mummy, really.


	2. Chapter 2

They met directly at the bank, and Basil, motioning for silence, led Ratigan down a side alley. Then she took him down a byzantine series of gates and passages, which she opened with a ring of keys Ratigan presumed she’d been given by a bank director. Basil murmured constantly while she navigated the labyrinth, obviously remembering directions. Ratigan remained silent so as not to break her concentration and lose them forever (or at least for several hours) in some underworld out of a Poe story. With a final, triumphant flourish of the hunting crop she carried (no doubt for use in self-defense against Clay), Basil led them into a vast vaulted cellar. 

“Clay and his man will tunnel right into this very room. We’ve at least an hour before us," she remarked at low volume, "for they can hardly take any steps until the good pawnbroker is safely out of the way, and his hours are as regular as Immousuel Kant’s. Once he’s abed, they’ll not lose a minute. The sooner they do their work, the longer they’ll have for their escape.”

“They weigh glory against safety,” Ratigan considered, inspecting the wall at the point of entry Basil had indicated with her crop. “The longer they stay at it, the more they can make away with.” 

“Mm. You’ll have to shutter your dark lantern, I’m afraid--the enemy's preparations have gone so far that we cannot risk the presence of a light. These are daring men, and though we shall take them at a disadvantage, they may do us some harm, unless we are careful. When they come through, we must close in swiftly. If they fire, have no compunction about shooting them down."

Ratigan smirked, putting a hand to his chest. “Unusually bloodthirsty, my dear. Besides, how do you know I’ve a gun on my person?” 

Basil snorted. “You’re either exceptionally pleased to see me or it’s at your hip, bundled to make the shape unrecognizable but nevertheless distorting the otherwise well-tailored line of your coat. I never have to ask you to bring your revolver.” 

She scanned the room. “You’re rather too large to be accommodated anywhere but there.” She pointed to a nook in the shadow of a large crate. 

Ratigan gave her a look. “Do you seriously propose we sit here in pitch-darkness, for upwards of an hour, in opposite corners of a cellar, in silence, with no conversation to relieve the tedium? Remind me never to let you plan our diversions. You’ve many talents, my dear, but no head for organization.” It was painful to be surrounded by crates of money he couldn’t make off with, as well.

“Anything above a whisper could be dangerous,” Basil pointed out irritably, visibly huffing. Ratigan could tell then she’d thought this outing rather good, combining both of their interests and skillsets, and winced slightly, regretting his off-hand joke. 

“Then we’ll whisper,” he said simply. He shuttered and set down the lantern, and then grabbed Basil’s wrist, reeling her in. He squatted cross legged, and nimbly positioned Basil’s fussing, squirming body so that they could speak into one another’s ears. “Comfortable, dearest?”

“I am _not_ spending the evening in your lap, thank you!” He could feel Basil crossing her arms over her chest. “The cellar’s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.”

“But Basil,” Ratigan feigned surprise, squeezing her a touch more tightly, both to make escape difficult and because Basil was undeniably shapely, “it really is the most convenient arrangement. We’re both of us keen observers--we won’t miss the scrape of men breaking through a stone wall. True, they might easily detect ordinary conversation, especially before they’ve started. But a whisper so close as this?” He adjusted his hold, rumbling into her ear easily. “And then when the moment is actually upon us, amidst that racket of masonry they’ll never hear us taking up arms and readying ourselves.”

“I’ve no interest in being _dandled_ and listening to your nonsense for an hour!” Basil huffed--but notably, she made no further attempt to extricate herself.

“No? It’s a pity, because I certainly have an hour’s worth of endearments at the ready. I’m _wasted_ on you, I ought to have been spared for a romantic.” Ratigan sighed like a lovelorn youth, ignoring Basil’s murmured ‘oh for god’s sake.’ “What, then, would you prefer to speak of?”

“How’s the book going?” Basil asked nastily. 

Ratigan winced. “Unkind. Better than it was the other week, thank you. Since you take such an interest, and since, further, you are trapped in the circle of my fond embrace, you can hear all about it.”

Basil gave a theatrical groan in his ear, but then listened with exceptional patience and what seemed to be keen interest to the course of his struggle to organize the dense monograph. “Why not ask your students what they’d find the most sensible arrangement of the material? Presumably they remember their initial experience of learning calculus better than we do our own.”

“It’s hardly an introductory text,” Ratigan scoffed, affronted that Basil seemed not to appreciate the gravity of his academic endeavors, which he hoped were almost as impressive as his criminal achievements.

“Oh no, perish the thought of you writing a foundational text,” Basil huffed, tickling his ear delightfully. “But why not make it easy to follow, if such a thing can be done without the text being rendered insufferably patronizing? You had to personally explain half the concepts to me, old fellow--I trust I’m not boasting when I suggest that that hardly augers for a broad readership. Still, what I eventually understood was most exciting, and could very well capture the public imagination. You know only professors appreciated Dynamics--I should think you of all people would like to bask in more general admiration.” 

“ _Basil_ , no quantity of acclaim could recompense me for bowdlerising my research to the point that Dawson might have produced it.”

“Oh I could nip your ear for being needlessly contrarian when you know that isn’t at all what I mean--and such an absurdly limited way of viewing the problem! Everyone can read Studies on Hysteria, can they not? And yet they haven’t experience as neurologists or as alienists. Why not at least see whether your work could convey its current content in the most approachable manner possible?”

“Dearest,” Ratigan slid a finger under Basil’s chin, “are you by any chance trying to seduce me to more legal pursuits by aiding my academic career?”

Basil batted him off lightly. “I myself propose to devote my declining years to the composition of a text-book, which shall focus the whole art of detection into one volume. The effects of such a work, combined with Dawson’s romantic efforts to popularize my ‘adventures’, as he calls them, and my having taken the time to cultivate a few pupils amongst the brighter young detectives in the force, should all pull in harness. Thus I may hope to leave the field in a better state than the lamentable one I found it in. I simply advise you according to my own plans.”

“And if I were rich and celebrated as an intellectual,” Ratigan countered, “what need would I then have of crime to achieve those ends? If I had a public persona to maintain, I could stand to lose much if my criminal activities were revealed--I’d be forced to choke them off, and your own hand would never have touched the business. You’d never have had to ask me to do it. You’d have your surrender without ever having negotiated a cease-fire. Admirably neat, Basil.”

Basil dropped her head on his shoulder, letting out an annoyed groan. 

Rattigan gave her back a comforting pat. “I rather like that you’re manipulative. It shows you take an interest. Besides, I can certainly keep up with it. The men most terrified and contemptuous of feminine wiles are those poor unsubtle souls least able to cope with any social intercourse more complex than the exchange of a grunt and a coin for a pint.”

“Congratulations on being witty and fey, and thus invulnerable to my machinations.” Ratigan could practically feel Basil rolling her eyes in the dark. “If Dawson’s silly infant hadn’t been ill, I shouldn’t have to put up with these indignities.”

“Colic isn’t quite an illness,” Ratigan corrected her, making a precise, Professorial gesture with his hand that was, fortunately, lost on Basil in the dark. “Though I assume Dawson wishes to be at home to reassure himself it is colic, rather than one of the more sinister conditions that mallady can easily be confused for.”

“Surely he’s already done that,” Basil grumbled. “Though perhaps not to a worried father’s satisfaction,” she admitted grudgingly after another moment. Then something seemed to occur to her. “Do you--and I cannot believe I’m asking this--have… siblings, Rattigan?” She used the tone she’d employ to ask whether he had fleas. 

The matter had never come up. Biography had never featured large in their conversations--they’d always had affairs of the mind and the moment to talk over. Ratigan hadn’t wanted to introduce the subject, or to press Basil on it. While Mycroft was still a part of her life, Basil seemed to want to forget everyone and everything else associated with her youth. 

“I have five younger sisters,” Ratigan said smoothly, discreetly stroking Basil’s arms. “All but the very youngest are married and decently established now. A slight relief, to have one’s income almost to oneself again. They’re in Dublin, or you’d have met them. Unattached young Bridget’s been sending quite pointed letters indicative of a desire to see the wider world. Thus far I’ve managed to dodge the question. My sisters think maths’ professor’s salaries are simply excessively generous, after all. Actually I’m fairly sure Kate, my nearest contemporary, has some notion as to why the dress allowance suddenly tripled, but Kate wouldn’t like to mention that sort of thing. If you should ever meet her, do claim your family are committed Catholics, for my sake.” 

“Five younger sisters!”

“Basil, you did stress the importance of keeping our voices down.” Ratigan’s mock solicitude salted the wound. 

“Who in god’s name would have six children? The very notion! I don’t mean to make a tired, coarse joke about your people’s habits, but honestly!”

“Rats, Basil?” Ratigan asked with dangerous politeness.

Basil flapped her hand. “No no, the Irish.” 

“Well in good Irish fashion, _I_ shouldn’t mind, dearest.”

Basil choked. “You want children? _You?_ ” 

“Why not?” Ratigan’s tone took on a certain dreamy quality. “I never imagined I’d have the opportunity to have any of my own, but by happy circumstance…” 

“What ‘happy circumstance’ is that? For one thing, we are not married, and for another, what if I’m not interested in children?” Basil poked Ratigan in the chest emphatically. 

In the dark, knowing Basil couldn’t see it, Ratigan made a quite ugly face of alarm. “I had--hoped we might discuss the matter, Basil.”

“God I ought to have seen it--the way you spoil that stupid cat of yours!” Basil murmured, seemingly to herself. She then returned her attention to the would-be doting papa beneath her. “I’m hardly suited to being an Angel in the House,” Basil hissed. “Pregnancy would be most inconvenient, naturally, but I should certainly be able to manage it. It’s the _rearing_ I’d be particularly ill-suited to. My work is always going to make great demands of me. I’ve little patience, I’ve foul habits, I’ve a great many enemies--”

“You’re clever, resourceful, sympathetic and ready to work in the cause of anyone who needs your help. And I daresay you could find a husband who is most interested in sharing these domestic responsibilities with you, who respects your endeavors and is capable of offering you a degree of--”

“Is this vital?” Basil interrupted him. “For you. Is it--compulsory?”

Ratigan bristled. “I didn’t imagine you’d consider quite a standard proposition in the light of compulsion. If your reluctance stems from my--”

“It _doesn’t_ ,” she hissed. “Not everything is about your damned race or class or nationality, _some_ things are about--”

“You. As our marriage would be. You, first and foremost.” Ratigan paused, making an abortive gesture, wrenching up his face and clenching his hand and then drooping, releasing the strain. “If you can’t stand the idea, in any form, I would reconcile myself to that.”

“You shouldn’t always be after me to reconsider?” Basil’s incredulity showed in the light huff that preceded her response. “You should not be disappointed in me if I--”

“ _Dis_ \--I should never be _disappointed_ in you, you _blithering idiot_.” His hands clenched around her shoulders in frustration and then he let her go, adjusting his tie and clearing his throat. He then slid back into their whispering position. “It is not--my ideal arrangement of our affairs, but it ranks infinitely above a life without you in it.” 

He blinked. Had Basil seriously just--hypothetically--spoken of potentially marrying him? “So if you find the idea repulsive, you needn’t worry--” Ratigan began to whisper more softly still.

“I don’t.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’d quite like children. To be a--well, a mother. Yes, I suppose I would like it. I hadn’t considered it, actually. I do have my doubts. My mother was--we weren’t fond of one another. I shouldn’t like to be her. She was a Basilea too, you know. Idiotic name. Anything but that, if I should have a girl. But then I’m hardly her, and--well, I run no risk of marrying a man like my father. One should have doubts, you know. Undue conviction is unsound. Suspicious even.” 

A spike of fury with Basil passed over him, and he squeezed her shoulders again before breathing, calming himself. “When are you going to cease _testing_ me?”

“I don’t know,” Basil murmured, amused. “When do you intend to cease passing?”

He was stunned. “Basil--”

“Shh.” In her effort to stay quiet, she brushed the side of her face against his. Ratigan swallowed hard. Basil adjusted herself in his lap. “So,” her tone was amused, “you’d like to _breed_ me, would you?”

He gave a choked half-laugh. “I’d hardly call it that.”

“What would you call it--hrm, is that your gun?” She patted the object in question. “I don’t think you’ll be able to easily pull it out. Why did you switch pockets?”

He coughed. “Ungentlemanly as the disclosure may be, I’m afraid it isn’t. Rather it’s--evidence of my great pleasure in seeing you.”

“You _can’t_ see me,” Basil corrected, huffing. “It’s pitch black.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Hm.” Basil stretched lazily in his lap, popping her back. This did not help matters. “It’s been perhaps--three quarters of an hour? I don’t expect them for that length again. Remember, whatever the provocation, no sound above a soft whisper--and I won’t be able to hear a soft whisper, if I move farther from your lips. Tap three times if there’s a problem. Now, up on your knees, come on.” Basil stepped off his lap, precluding questions.

Befuddled, he did as she said, with a tinge of worry about the knees of his trousers on this dank floor. There was a slight whomp sound as Basil dropped to the ground in front of him, and then he felt her tugging at the buttons of his flies, slipping them open briskly like a woman who knew her way around male trouser fastenings. 

“Basil!” he hissed. 

She reached up and put a finger to his lips, giving them a condescending tap. Feeling a stab of irritation in the midst of his confusion and rising wonder, Ratigan decided that if she could take liberties, so could he. Ratigan kissed her finger, giving it a lewd lick. Basil yanked her hand back, apparently cross at not having anticipated that. She brought it down, then, and used it to work his member out of his trousers. Ratigan dropped a hand to Basil’s face, tracing her expression, and could feel it crease into a frown--puzzlement, he guessed. Basil used her hands to gauge his circumference, and then his length. She palpably started, and for an instant seemed to reconsider her decision. Ratigan’s thumb rested on her lips, and he felt them open to say something, then shut again. Ratigan cleared his throat and raised his hand to tap--reluctant as he was to stop her, perhaps she wanted some form of reassurance? 

But Basil had rallied, and she slowly began to explore his cock with her fingers. She seemed to not entirely know what to do with it, and so he wrapped his hand around hers and guided her in giving him a couple of solid pumps. With his other hand, he felt her nodding. Basil flicked his hand away and copied him. After a moment she shifted her grip, retaining his firm hold and motion--in the focusing perfect darkness, Ratigan recognized her hand’s violin-bow arch, and after a moment felt the dance and drag of her accustomed fingering. He’d watched her play before, passing her window on walks through the district, and had always felt a catch of want--the way Basil coddled and stroked and cherished the instrument, tucking it against her, dexterously coaxing it. That concert-raptness on her face. And now he was her instrument. Finally he was hers. In the dark and silence, it seemed fantastic, nigh unreal.

A soundless instrument--perhaps Basil only felt safe making this experiment when Ratigan couldn’t see her fumble, couldn’t say a word. Basil should, Ratigan felt, know herself utterly safe in his company. As if he’d scorn her inexperience, as if he could do anything but accept her mark of favor with worshipful gratitude. But perhaps it wasn’t _him_ , as Basil had been at pains to point out earlier, during their discussion of children. She hated feeling at a disadvantage, hated looking stupid unless the pose were actually entirely under her control, a deceptive display of her mastery. Perhaps it was easier for her to make a fool of herself in the dark. He wrapped his tail around her torso and squeezed her fondly, conveying in some measure what he wasn’t allowed to say. 

Basil tentatively licked the head of his cock. Ratigan’s breath caught, and he checked himself, biting his lip. This, then, was what she’d been intending. What she’d prepared for. There was a slight schoolboy quality to her maiden effort--she’d read a book and was trying to replicate a diagram. He’d thrown her off by not being within the median size-range (any book Basil had been able to lay hand on had probably been mouse-oriented, for a start), and she’d had to improvise to find something to do with the rest of him. Sure enough, Basil popped the head of his cock into her mouth, and then took a few inches more, stopping when it became awkward and using her right hand to pump him and her left to steady herself--that small, elegantly-boned hand gripping his thigh. 

Nothing about the experience, and most certainly not the slightly studied quality, was displeasing. Basil had looked up what to do--that didn’t necessarily mean that she’d planned to do this all along, and that she’d engineered a congenial circumstance, but it did _suggest_ those conclusions. The notion floored him. And she was so touchingly, obviously inexperienced. Though, as Basil had probably intended, Ratigan could hardly give thought to these considerations. He was rather distracted. His normally impregnable paramor was on her knees before him: the cold air of the cellar licked his cock around the heated, now-sure grip of her hand as she frigged him and the crowning, hot suction of her mouth. Her tongue daintily flicked at the vein, and around the rim of his cock’s head. He had to take care that his grip on Basil’s skull didn’t seize and hurt her, had to stifle a sharp sound. Ratigan tore off a glove and shoved it between his teeth and cursed Basil for denying him the opportunity to coo stupid endearments at her as she kept up her precise, dipping rhythm. 

Maddened, Ratigan jerked her head slightly--not fucking her face, but throwing off a clockwork precision that had too little of Basil in it. He prayed she’d understand his meaning, and bit a moan of thanks and rich gratification into his glove when she took him in a sloppy plunge, lashing him fiercely with her tongue, the rhythm of her hand becoming allegro with hints of vivace. _There_ she was--all passion and unpredictability, all her own particular ways. It strained him to be still, to endure the adroit administration of pleasure, not to just fuck into that small, wet, lush mouth, into Basil, his darling, his goddess, his perfect--god if she’d suck him off in a cellar she might _well_ marry him, she might _finally_ marry him, she might let him--what if she loved him? She must love him, even if only just a little. The idea seized at his heart and still she moved, plunging her mouth down, her hand tight around the base of him, squeezing firmly, her head bobbing faster, and it wasn’t _fair_ that he couldn’t caterwaul like an animal or even whimper her name. He came trying to smother a choke and a pant, and Basil swallowed him very sweetly. In the lax moment when the final shivers of coming lapped away, he ran a trembling, tender hand over the side of her face. 

Ratigan then spit out his glove, his chest heaving with hard breaths. He returned to his former cross-legged position and hauled Basil peremptorily back into his lap. He was caught between a flurry of urgent wants, and he ended up pulling Basil into an insistent kiss, to which she acquiesced with surprising grace. Ratigan shoved his tongue into her mouth, and he could taste himself on her lips and groaned quietly into her mouth. He fumbled his still-shaky, ungloved hand between them, and he ran his thumb hard over the seam in her tight trousers which rested over her womanhood. It was slightly damp to the touch--he felt like laughing headily, like gloating, like seeing if he could bring Basil off before--they froze, simultaneously hearing a ‘chink’ noise and spotting a pinpoint-glint of light. Their quarry. Silently, Basil slipped away from his lap and took up her position, concealed, near the aperture. In the dark he heard the thin air-displacement that indicated she’d lifted her hunting crop. Ratigan hastily tucked himself away and tidied himself as best he could in the dark with a handkerchief. He re-donned his slightly wet glove with a moue of distaste, slipped his actual-gun out of his pocket, and made ready. 

With a rending, tearing sound, one of the broad white stones of the wall gave, and left a square, gaping hole, through which streamed the light of a lantern. Over the edge there peeped a clean-cut, boyish face, which looked keenly about it, and then, with a hand on either side of the aperture, drew itself shoulder-high and waist-high, until one knee rested upon the edge. In another instant he stood at the side of the hole, and was hauling after him a companion, lithe and small like himself, with a very red-furred face.

"It's all clear," he whispered. "Have you the chisel and the bags? Great Scott! Jump, Archie, jump, and I'll swing for it!"

Basil had sprung out and seized the intruder by the collar. The other dived down the hole, and Ratigan clutched at his coattails and heard the sound of rending cloth. The light flashed upon the barrel of a revolver, but Basil’s hunting crop came down on the man's wrist, and the pistol clinked upon the stone floor.

"It's no use, John Clay," said Basil triumphantly, "you have no chance at all!"

"So I see," Clay answered, with the utmost coolness. "I fancy that my pal is all right, though I see you have got his coat-tails."

"There are three men waiting for him at the door," said Basil. “And--” Ratigan gave his bell a flick, “thank you, a well-trained cat at the entrance of the pawn shop. 

“Felicia won’t kill him,” Ratigan solicitously reassured Clay. “She’ll merely detain him. And perhaps chew, a very little. An incommodious but an effective berth.”

"Oh, indeed. You two seem to have done the thing very completely. I suppose you are my nemesis Basil Nest, and you my competitor, none other than the _illustrious_ Professor Ratigan. I didn’t expect your collusion. I must compliment you on surprising me."

"And I you," Basil answered, more generous than Ratigan felt in the face of that ‘compliment’. "Your red-furred idea was very new and effective." Ratigan, meanwhile, gave an unimpressed look at Clay’s describing Basil as _his_ nemesis. Opponent, to be sure, but Clay would do well not to gild the lily. And he himself was hardly _in competition_ with young Clay. Clay was a mere nuisance, not a threat. 

Ratigan easily took hold of Clay, bringing out a length of rope for the purposes of securing him, and Clay sneered.

"I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy sewer-rat hands," snarled the prisoner. "A savage beast like you may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness also, when you address me, always to say 'sir' and 'please.'"

An amateur might have released Clay in surprise. But though Ratigan’s hand, holding the rope, froze, and the massive hand securing both of Clay’s wrists automatically seized tighter. Ratigan had disguised himself as a mouse only to a degree. His name was obvious. He wore his tail bare, and obvious. He didn’t actually wish to conceal his nature for others’ comfort, and his efforts to do so to smooth his way in the world were ambivalent. Yet even knowing that Clay was reckless, and now thought he’d nothing left to lose, Ratigan had been unprepared to hear it. And in front of _Basil_. 

“You heard me,” Clay pressed. “Your _compatriot_ may bind me, but I refuse to be manhandled by a degenerate, low-blooded, nothing thing like--”

“I don’t deign to,” Basil interrupted. She took up Clay’s lantern and brought it to the level of his eyes, so they could see each other’s faces in the dark room. 

“Clay,” she murmured, consideringly. “Such a first-class education, such noble antecedents--” Clay preened at his rival’s lamenting over his fallen glory. Ratigan felt his blood rise at Basil’s apparent failure to recognize how deeply he’d been insulted. 

“I suppose you wonder how I went to the bad, eh?” Clay seemed almost prepared to launch into a bildungsroman. Ratigan felt nauseated.

Basil smiled, politely. “Oh, no. I imagine it’s the same old, sordid little story. A spot of family trouble or a debt of honor, if you’ve a scrap of sympathetic interest in you--but somehow I doubt it. No, I imagine you simply--dropped.” Basil tilted her head to one side, considering. “A rotten apple rolling down and away from a decent, upstanding tree. I imagine that efforts were made to rescue you by those who cared about you, and about decent conduct generally. I assume that you embarrassed these good individuals. That you thought yourself superior to them, and to anyone you hurt. You’re the lowest of the low--a murderer, a thief, a smasher, a forger,” Basil’s voice picked out his crimes with nasty precision, “and you’re not even terribly _good_ at it, are you?”

Clay paled under his fur, and began to tremble.

“Education and pedigree,” Basil continued inexorably, the fierce, mad, fever glint in her eye at odds with her calm tone, “and you’re nothing to the man you insult. He built a criminal edifice the world will never see the like of again out of _nothing_. Given every opportunity, you are merely a dilettante. There is not one arena in which he couldn’t best you, with his rat blood and his low origins. His is the name everyone will remember, Clay. Not yours, for all its associations. _Nemesis? Competitor?_ He is a character, and you are merely a cog: one of several enablers of an amusing little incident. A footnote in my annals.” 

With a snarl, Clay lunged for Basil, and though Ratigan had him pinned, he almost made it, snapping at her face with his teeth madly. Basil didn’t so much as flinch.

“Who’s the savage beast now, Clay?” She tsked. “You pride yourself on your status as a gentleman, but you’re a brute animal, really. It takes so little to shake your foundations. I only needed a minute to unmake you.” With calculated decision that would have seemed like spontaneity to anyone unused to the hard flicker in her eye of a judgment being formed, Basil began to laugh at Clay. There was something a touch unusual about the laugh--it was perhaps just a pitch too high, too feminine. Nothing anyone could have sworn to, or even identified unless, like Ratigan, they’d known what they were hearing before they heard it. 

Something in the sound drove Clay to unthinking frenzy. He surged and struggled in Ratigan’s arms, trying to get at Basil. “You fucking cunt,” he seethed, “you stupid little bitch, I’ll kill you, I’ll--” 

“Shall I gag him?” Ratigan asked, keeping his tone contemptuously bored.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Basil said with a roll of her eyes. Swiftly Ratigan had Clay in ropes, with a thick wodge of Clay’s own handkerchief stopping his mouth. Bundled, Clay still struggled and cursed--but both actions were muted, now.

“Come along then,” Basil said cheerily, gathering the lanterns, her hunting crop, and everything that had dropped in the kerfuffle. Easily, Ratigan lifted Clay, and he grinned as they delivered the man to the astonished police, who knew quite well who Ratigan was. 

“Erm, Basil--” murmured the sergeant on duty, eyeing the Professor nervously. 

“Not tonight, my good fellow,” Basil slung her arm around the sergeant’s shoulder. “Now, something rather alarming is about to occur. Don’t run, officers. I assure you, you are all perfectly safe!” 

Ratigan rang his bell, and the policemen swallowed and struggled to remain calm as a massive cat trundled around the corner. Grudgingly, Felicia spit out her captive--terrified and moist, but not really worse for wear. Ratigan cooed embarrassing, effusive praise over his good girl, yes, daddy’s precious little helper, and Basil shared a sardonic expression with the sergeant. Ratigan then sent her homewards with the promise of ‘a lovely treat’ for her efforts, which had the assembled officers shivering. 

“An excellent night’s work, fellows!” Basil clapped her hands together. “Rather late to invite you lot in for a nightcap, alas. I expect I’ll hear from you and the bank manager in the morning?” She addressed the sergeant. “Good, good. Well, my partner in the vigil and I shall share a hansom a part of the way. Good evening, gentlemen!”


	3. Chapter 3

On the busier Saxe-Coburg square, they readily found a mouse-sized transport going their way. They might have hopped aboard a human conveyance, but those berths were exposed, and it looked like rain. Sure enough, no sooner were they on their way then a deluge began in earnest. The closed cabin of the carriage gave them privacy. 

“I expect he didn’t know what he was saying, at the last,” Ratigan observed to Basil, while making a note in his diary--‘find Felicia a fish’.

Basil laughed sourly, looking out the window, away from him. “No, I expect you’re right. Sometimes people do realize things they can’t consciously accept. He’ll rationalize it away in the morning, I’m sure. And anyway, what could he say? That I laughed something like a woman? Who’d credit it?” Basil shook her head. “And yet men crack apart under that sound. I’ve seen it before, though I have never been the instrument of the effect.” A wry half-smile twisted the corner of Basil’s lip that Ratigan could see. 

“Another first for the evening.” 

He tucked away his memorandum book. “You made a deadly enemy, there. Clay will see you in the ground, if he possibly can.”

“Hardly my first. Besides, he’ll swing. As he himself suggested. He’s a murderer, you know.” She watched the cobbles for a moment before continuing. “And what am I for sending him to it? Him and so many others. But that’s a question for another day. And in this case, I do believe that the soon-to-be-condemned richly deserves justice.”  
“Basil. I--” Ratigan began to thank her, or to discuss anything that had happened that evening. 

Basil hastily interrupted him, glancing at him with wild eyes and looking then back to the window in an instant. “You know, I’ve been frustrated by the criticism _Studies on Hysteria_ ’s received thus far. I can only imagine the effect will worsen, once it’s translated into English and our stolid medical profession gets hold of it--no offense to Dawson. His brotherhood is hardly known for its open-mindedness or inventiveness.” Ratigan opened his mouth to speak, but Basil rattled on. “It’s not that work which I think flawed, but ultimately a brilliant intervention in the field, _shouldn’t_ be criticized--just the opposite, if the theory’s to grow and reach its fullest realization. It’s that the criticisms have hitherto been so totally irrelevant to the point! 

“A great many men of the field have hemmed and hawed over the very possibility of the sexual abuse of children, which we must acknowledge to be a sad fact. I’ve several times run into it in my professional capacity, in cases Dawson hasn’t seen fit to share with the public. Unfortunately not acknowledging unsightly things doesn’t make them a whit less true. And then these learned men claim these Viennese doctors’ conclusions are unreliable, because they don’t make all their clinical data available. They show their colleagues the chains of logic by which they came to their suppositions, and admit every way in which they suppose their logic to be imperfect, incomplete, or open to further development. What more can we ask? 

“Of _course_ the _Studies_ must be thoroughly examined, and there’s much in them to take umbrage with, especially if you care at all about the field, the work itself, the brilliance therein and the developments still to come this work provokes. But _surely_ \--surely you must criticize them for the _right reasons_. The wrong criticism is meaningless. It’s worse than meaningless. It simply confuses the issue. Censure must be subtle and deft as surgery, if it’s to cure. Thoughts and the words that express them are our only instruments, here. We have considerable responsibility to detail, to exactitude.” 

Basil lapsed from heated, passionate speech into silence, and Ratigan let her breathe for a moment. The air was thick and possible, and she wasn’t finished. He did not interrupt her.

“And he had _no right_ to say that to you,” Basil spat after a moment’s silence. “None at all. You should be chastened for your true faults, in the first place, and in the second who the _hell_ is he to take up the office? As though he was better than you, as though he had your gifts, as though his precious blue-blooded hands were clean. _Amateur_. The _rankest_ \--no that’s wrong, he doesn’t even love it. That would be something.” Basil fast breaths gradually slowed. 

“I should not have said what I did to him,” she murmured, calmer now. “It was--unhelpful. I made rather an ugly scene. And yet he took _such_ a liberty.” With startling directness, Basil turned her head from the window and looked Ratigan in the eye. She leaned against the frame insouciantly, holding his gaze. “He appropriated my office, and I cannot look kindly on that. I am, apparently,” Basil smiled with a trace of irony, “jealous of my rights. You are mine to criticize, are you not?”

Ratigan swallowed hard. “Utterly.” 

Basil owned him, on her knees in front of him. Basil owned him when she was slicing a man to ribbons for daring to say to his face what Ratigan already knew everyone thought of him. Making a mess of her clean, clean hands, because he was hers and he’d not be spoken to in that manner to by anyone less intimately familiar with his character and his transgressions. He was her creature, completely. 

Basil smiled, warm as though she’d come from a concert. “Good.”

The carriage juddered to a stop outside her apartments. “Don’t go,” Basil suggested in a hearty, manly tone. “Come up for a nightcap, at least.” 

He didn’t need asked twice, and he walked into Basil’s apartments in a daze. “Judson’s in bed, then,” she murmured, observing some detail of the foyer invisible to him and nodding sharply. “I expected she would be. Come along!”

In her sitting room, Ratigan lightly stabbed at the embers in the hearth with a poker, stoking the fire into a roaring blaze while she fetched down the brandy glasses and the decanter. They silently toasted, then flung themselves into paralleled armchairs on either side of the hearth. Ratigan noted with amusement that Basil took a comfortable green affair, while he occupied a prissier red armchair tall enough to accommodate him, with elegant Chesterfield backing. It was as though the chairs had been selected to suit the two of them.

“My trousers will need a thorough cleaning,” Ratigan observed sourly. “I may have to replace them, if that mark of--” he squinted at it.

“Mud, I believe,” Basil supplied. “They’ve damp in that cellar, and should see to it. Bills rot as well as any paper.”

“--doesn’t come out. Shall I bill City and Suburban?”

“Do. Eugh, and preemptively hold them financially accountable for the cold I’ve caught in that dank room.” Basil wrinkled her nose, as though she felt a cough (which never arrived) coming on.

Ratigan rolled his eyes and stretched his legs. “You’re in all likelihood merely being dramatic. You are rarely ill, and you are far more difficult to incapacitate than _that_. I speak as one who knows. Besides, if you were cold, you might have borrowed my cape or my dinner jacket.”

“And have _you_ coming down with something? Writing me Byronic letters enjoining me to come to your “deathbed”, quoting “In Memoriam” poignantly, all over an obvious sniffle? No _thank you. I_ am _not_ the ‘dramatic’ one.”

“You will observe that you just switched registers to appropriately intone the word ‘dramatic.’”

“Only for effect!”

“My darling kettle.” 

Basil’s eyes narrowed, and then her face relaxed into an attitude of polite correction. “My good fellow, I am an eminently practical, rational woman, with none of _your_ \--oh _will you_ stop _sniggering?!_ Beast,” she cursed him fondly. “A finger more brandy, I believe.” Basil fumbled her hand blindly across the end-table, lazily seeking it. “To heat the bones. I should think we deserve it. Work worth doing, and well done.” 

Ratigan leaned forward and she topped him up, falling back in her chair decadently after doing so, as though she had Italian noodles for bones. 

“And how do I compare as a partner to the illustrious absent Major Dawson?”

Basil snorted at the remark. “Well I’ve never enjoyed _that_ particular means of killing time with Dawson, for a start. Incidentally, in case the matter’s unclear, I didn’t invite you here for intercourse.”

Ratigan was slightly discomforted by her description of what had passed between them as a means of whiling away the evening. He’d have called it making love. But a moment’s thought suggested that Basil was being brittle in that performative, chappily-masculine way she took to as a mask or security blanket when she was feeling vulnerable and defensive. 

“No, I didn’t imagine you had.” Ratigan took a swig of his brandy. “I should prefer for us to be married when that particular consummation devoutly to be wished occurs. However I am very eager to demonstrate my gratitude. Materially. On my honor,” Ratigan placed the hand not holding his glass on his chest, “no violation of the frontier you mention would be involved, and if you are disinclined this evening, we shall speak no more of it.”

Basil squinted at Ratigan, then leapt up and started rifling the books and papers on what could loosely be termed her desk. Ratigan wondered how much, exactly, she would Not Appreciate him slipping Rose a sovereign and asking her to tidy in here, no matter what her Master said about ‘touching nothing’. (‘Not if he valued his life’, he supposed.) He further wondered what the devil Basil was looking for. 

With a bright “aha!” Basil came and stood next to him, popping herself on the arm of the chair and holding out the book. It contained, to Ratigan great surprise, graphicly detailed illustrations of men in interesting and indelicate positions. Ratigan hadn’t thought he would spend his evening examining homosexual pornography with the woman he hoped to make his wife (pornography she’d apparently purchased and extensively perused to a point of great familiarity, no less), but he had no objection whatever to the turn of events. 

“Now I was under the impression that, primarily, you’d be interested in such acts as your homosexual inclinations might lend themselves to--substituting myself as your partner.” Basil tapped an example illustration. “Sodomizing my arse from behind and the like,” she suggested breezily. “Though I can of course take you, naturally, if that’s your preference. There are instruments to that effect, are there not? Not to mention tails. And naturally you might make me something, if there’s no suitable device on the market. Ratigan, are you well? You’ve come over puce.”

Ratigan quickly swigged the remainder of his drink, and Basil passed him the book, got up, fetched the bottle and returned, pouring him another and taking back the manuscript. 

“As you might imagine, your proposals are of enormous interest to me. But I’ve every indication of regularly taking advantage of the more obvious, traditional pleasures afforded to us. And not simply when I’m attempting to--” Ratigan delicately lapsed into silence. 

Basil waited until his mouth was again full of liquor to sweetly inquire, “impregnate me?” He struggled not to choke or spit it out, and glared at Basil’s serene, faux-innocent smile. How had Basil figured out how much the notion appealed to him? How had she so quickly and thoroughly grasped the erotic element of the fondness with which he cherished the idea?

“Besides,” Ratigan continued, recovered, “taking you in the manner you propose will be--something of an undertaking. Given what you had cause to be rather surprised at this evening. I’m certainly in favor of attempting it, but it’d take serious and gradual preparation.” Oh god, and after delicious days of working Basil up to it as she mewled on the fingers he’d twist into her round, bitable arse, he could fuck her from behind, pawing at her breasts and slipping his hands down, using her hips as leverage to slam into her more effectively, toying with her cunt with his fingers until she came on his cock. He’d wanted some version of this since he’d thought Basil a man, but after the revelation of her gender he hadn’t let himself presume. And Basil could sod him!

Basil raised an eyebrow. “Are you actually avoiding mentioning your ludicrous priapic endowment? Really? I would have bet my life you’d be luxuriating in my ‘surprise.’” 

Ratigan rolled his eyes. “Dearest, I should be very boring indeed if I had to count a natural blessing as one of my most impressive and unusual features. It’ is in part a species-characteristic, so that much less a tribute to my person. And there again, I’ve had a great many years to get over it.”

“Bully for you. Some of us were prepared for the range described in the text.” Basil thwacked the text in question feelingly.

Ratigan flicked through the book with an idle thumb. As he’d suspected. “The text about _mice?_ ” he cooed sweetly.

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to source homosexual pornography, let alone _anything_ trustworthy, and not simply racist, about the sexual habits of rats?” Basil huffed. 

“Yes.” Well--he did.

“What I don’t understand,” Basil dragged them back on track with an irate huff, “is what precisely you mean by reciprocation? I haven’t the anatomical equipment for the act, as I hope you are quite aware. Naturally I understand how a young lady might come to find herself indisposed, and I’ve studied this manual thoroughly, but I’m afraid I’ve absolutely no idea what you might refer to.”

Ratigan tilted his head back, and he regarded Basil with some confusion. “To be blunt, precious, I’m suggesting cunnilingus.”

Basil regarded him blankly.

With rising incredulity, Ratigan tried again. “Gamahuching? Larking? A face job? Eating?”

“If you’re attempting, _most_ convolutedly, to suggest a late supper, I’m sure Mrs Judson’s left some--”

Ratigan rucked up his hair in frustration, then smoothed it down again. “Have you _honestly_ never manually stimulated yourself?” 

Basil frowned. “As in--have I been diagnosed with or treated for hysteria? I fail to see how it’s relevant, but while I’ve heard some slight information about the illness from Dawson--who doesn’t like to discuss it, but whom I know to favor Grainville’s approach over that of Squeaker-Brown--it’s never afflicted me. My nerves have always been excellent. My health is robust, as you know.”

Ratigan’s frustrated expression smoothed into an oily smile of anticipation. “Perhaps it would be best if I simply--showed you what I mean. We’ve apparently been keeping quite different sorts of company.”

“You mean _you’ve_ been consorting with a great many prostitutes.” Basil conveyed disapproval and smothered jealousy via a slight inclination of her chin. Ratigan brought said chin and Basil back around with two fingers.

“Only circumstantially, since I found my affections engaged.”

Basil blinked at him. “That’s--well. I am, of course, glad to hear of my rightful safety from the dark consequences of venery. But it’s also--I’m going to change for bed. Wait here, I’ll call you through in a moment. Amuse yourself.” She snapped the book shut and handed it to Ratigan. After taking a moment to turn the key in the lock of the sitting room they occupied, which led onto her bedroom, she went therein, shutting the door behind her. Ratigan was left to flick through folio illustrations he was too distracted to concentrate on. He felt agitated, but more than that triumphant and self-satisfied at the prospect before him.

A few minutes later, Basil said he might come in now, if he liked. He found her sitting in bed, clad in a woman’s white nightdress. The garment was thin and understated, with hints of lace and ribbon at the cuffs and hem and a collar that revealed some decolletage. It was somehow trousseau-ish. Basil probably normally slept in a man’s night shirt, in case of fire or home invasion, only daring to wear her female clothing in moments of alert wariness--as though _that_ were the drag. This nightshirt had been fetched out of a trunk specially. Ratigan could see the lines where it had been folded, and when he stepped forward and reached out his hand to twitch the fabric between his fingers, it smelled slightly of the lavender it had been packed in with. 

Ratigan unlaced his shoes and removed his gloves, belt, jacket and waistcoat while Basil watched, silently. He didn’t feel full nudity would be quite appropriate just yet. Laying the garments on the chair, he noted Basil’s own crumpled clothing had been thrown at its feet. With a fond tsk and look of reprimand (Basil rolled her eyes), he caught it up and briskly snapped it into folds, laying her clothing atop his own. 

“ _Honestly_ ,” Basil murmured as, in shirt sleeves and trousers, Ratigan clambered onto the unoccupied side of the bed and pulled her into a kiss. In the cellar he’d been kissing her, aggressively, passion-dazed--but in this slightly calmer setting, it was more evident to Ratigan that she’d probably given him her first kiss shortly after giving her first head. Basil was unusually passive, content for the moment to learn. 

With care, Ratigan ran a hand down her neck and over her collarbone, his thumb tracing the rim of her nightgown. Gliding over the fabric, he palmed her unbound breast through the thin nightshirt. The round weight of it sat pleasantly in his hand, and he traced a finger over her nipple, drawing his finger back and forth until it rose hard. He bent his head and, through the gown, lapped and sucked, then gently bit it. Basil made a sound like a sigh, and he lowered his hand to trace her cunt, the damp material a thin barrier between his fingers and her warm core, dragging sensation over the whole of her quim.

“Is this the manual stimulation, then?” Basil murmured, flushing through her tan fur.

Oh darling, he thought with a choked tenderness. He broke off from her breast to murmur, “not _precisely_.” He slipped his hand under her shift and cupped her cunt, lightly rolling his fingers against her. “More along these lines. Lie down.”

At a gesture from him, Basil rucked her shift off her shoulders, letting it pool around her waist. He pushed the shift up, until between them it lay across her stomach like a decorative sash. (He half expected that if he flipped Basil over he’d find her tied up with a bow resting at the small of her back, with ribbon-ends draping over her arse, presented to him as a present.) He pushed her knees apart and settled between Basil’s thighs on her far-too-small bed, his legs draping off the end.

“You’re smirking like Felicia getting that treat,” Basil observed wryly, to cover the slight nervousness pinching the corners of her eyes. “Should I be worried?”

“Mm. Very probably. Now, do tell me if it’s too rough. It is, after all, your _first_ such experience.”

Basil narrowed her eyes. “Stop enjoying this so much, it’s positively insufferable.”

“Oh, very well.” He reached forward and petted the lips of her cunt with an idle finger, tracing their outline, then flicked out his great lascivious tongue to lap delicately at her and stroke against her clit. Basil started and bucked, and he had to keep a grip on her thighs to hold her down. He chuckled. “You know, I’m afraid I’m still enjoying it, pet.” He explored the topography of her, and she shifted restlessly, seeming to feel an unaccustomed, diffuse pleasure. He then settled in, devoting himself to greedy, ravenous licking, burying his face. His muzzle ground against her pelvis, providing pressure. 

“Jesus Christ!” Basil twisted her hand into the fur on his head, petting his right ear in frantic bafflement. Ratigan was deeply thankful he’d canvassed several somewhat-bemused whores for information on the subject and paid them for their time, and for a few demonstrations on one another in front of him. He hadn’t voyeuristically enjoyed the instructional scenes (women who weren’t Basil weren’t intrinsically sexually interesting to him), but the careful notes he’d taken had apparently been well worth the professionals’ fees and his time. 

Basil was slick and soft and warm under his mouth. She tasted like salt and iron and water, and her body was so desperate for him, she was so richly wet. That was a change from men, and a charming tribute. She quivered delightfully. Her hips pistoned and juddered under his hands. She breathed shallowly and her hands caught and petted at him. He could feel himself growing hard, and Basil tensing in readiness. Reigning in his hunger, with the precision of a metronome, he began to lash her clit back and forth steadily under his tongue, taking her lips between two fingers and rolling them. He was no less enthusiastic, but he grew much more methodical--the ladies he’d consulted had very specifically commended to him the importance of rhythm at this juncture. Apparently sheer passion was sometimes not _quite_ what was needed. 

Basil made a noiseless, guttural sound and shoved his head down, panting and twisting on the bed. He could see and feel her wind up, hold at the precipice, seize and release. Afterwards she gasped for breath, and he laid his great head on her thigh. Idly he caressed her quim, and she shivered. Trembled. Then he leaned in and toyed with her with his tongue. 

“ _Now?_ ” Basil asked, incredulous. “I can’t possibly manage that again!” 

“Oh I think you can, sweetness.” Ratigan leaned back onto the slender pillow of her thigh and looked up at her, replacing his tongue with his caressing fingers. His voice was a sing-song of insinuation, which passed through velvet assurance and dropped into something rougher, a touch guttural. “You can certainly come for me again. In fact you’re going to, aren’t you? Mm,” he noted the throb of her cunt with amused appreciation, his voice lilting back up sardonically. “You don’t happen to like me talking to you, do you princess?”

“I’m simply still very sensitive,” Basil managed with great dignity. 

“ _Poor_ Basil. You’re also, evidently, something of a liar.”

“Shut _up_.”

“Why?” He asked with false innocence. “You evidently don’t want me to.”

“I--you--Ratigan, just shut up!”

“Well, if you insist.” He ducked his head, pushing his long, muscular tongue inside her cunt and fucking her with it. Basil yelped, her thighs snapping tight around his head and then slightly relaxing. 

“Oh, god in--mmph. Don’t you _dare_ snigger into my womanho--mmph!”

He pushed deeper in, the wet softness of the muscle negating the need for preparation, but still stretching the virgin Basil, whose eyes widened and who twisted the sheets in her hands. He began to draw his tongue in and out, flicking it hard inside her, and Basil made a delightfully stupid noise. 

He broke off. “Would you permit me to use my fingers in the same capacity? Merely one or two--”

“Yes yes yes yes, why are you even asking that of me, come _on!_ Wait wait wait wait, can you control your claws when you’re in an extremity? Are you _absolutely_ sure? That furtive expression tells me you are _not_ entirely sure.” Indeed Ratigan had never had such a problem before, but then he’d never before been fingering Basil, who he’d waited literal years to touch, so there really were no adequate precedents for his level of interest in the proceedings. “Your gloves are reinforced against them, are they not?” Basil fumbled around and grabbed Ratigan’s gloves off the chair where he’d left them. “Given the delicacy of the area you’ll be within, do me the courtesy of leaving them on? It’s most awkward I know, but we can make proper trials later.” 

For a moment Ratigan frowned, annoyed at being denied the pleasure of feeling her around him and at having his control called into question. But then it was a fair enough precaution. Ratigan didn’t want to accidentally hurt her, and she was somewhat nervous about this initial outing as was. Besides, he’d come away with a lovely favor--Basil-scented gloves to crush against his muzzle and twine through his fingers when he remembered this evening in lonely, solitary sessions of self-gratification. Reconciled, he slid in a single gloved finger and frigged Basil teasingly, using the other to trace the circumference of her entrance. His mouth freed, he returned to devouring her quim. 

Despite Basil’s recent return to partial lucidity, the sudden combination seemed too much for her to process. “I can’t--fuck--darling, I don’t know if I--”

He broke away for a moment. “Take it out on me if you have to.” And sure enough, clawing at his shoulders and beating at them with her small fists seemed to relieve Basil’s excess of stimulation. He could feel her pulse around the two fingers he was now fucking her with, and she made soft shuddering noises with every thrust--wordless cries that made him moan around her clit and his own member twitch and throb in sympathy. 

Basil pushed up on her shoulders, trying to angle herself into the arch of the feeling and shifting to meet his thrusts. “Pádraic, _fuck_ , I--!” With a shrill keening noise she twisted, squeezing his fingers, and reeling from the word he dragged and twisted her peak out of her, making it linger agonizingly. 

Limp and spent, Basil fell back decadently on the pillows. Smug and gloating, Ratigan pushed himself up beside her and stripped off his gloves, then gathered her to him, making a soothing sound as he tucked her against his side, pillowing her head on his arm. With possessiveness rather than sexual intent, he draped a hand over her hot quim. Holding Basil, fucked-out and slick and she was, made him ache to throw his leg over hers and push his blood-heavy cock into her ready cunt, his tail into her arse, and fuck her through the mattress. But that sort of rutting hardly seemed the best way to dispose of his beloved’s virginity. Besides, she _had_ said she’d rather not, on this occasion. 

“Mm,” Basil said feebly after a moment. “‘Eating’, did you call it? That’s superb.”

“A maiden effort,” Ratigan dismissed, despite obviously preening at the compliment. (Basil snorted at the poor pun.) “I’m exceedingly gratified by your appreciation.”

“I can tell by your expression. There’s a cloth here, incidentally.” She gestured vaguely at the table. Ratigan plucked it up and wiped his mouth and hands. 

“I know I’ve no room to provide a comparative analysis, but it cannot normally be quite that good, or I _would_ have heard of it. I have a whole new worshipful appreciation for your tongue--not an organ I ever expected to develop a particular rapport with.”

“I don’t think it’s well-thought of by fastidious persons,” Ratigan said in the interest of fairness, “and thus perhaps does not receive its due fame. Though you’re welcome to continue praising me.” 

Basil raised her hand languidly and brushed his iron-hard cock through his trousers. His breath caught. She unfastened his flies and gave him a few considering strokes. “You can fuck me intercurally without entering me, can’t you? That shouldn’t hurt me, should it?” She tugged lazily at his trousers, swinging her legs around so he could lie on top of her. He readily clambered to do so. Basil unbuttoned and pushed off his shirt, drawing him down into a loose, lush kiss. He started to frott against her, and she squirmed and gasped with residual sensitivity. She was slick and fuckable and he had done this to her, and when he came he’d drip down into her. They’d richly combine. She twitched in an after-pleasure almost passing into pain as he licked at her neck. The length of him slid against her cunt, and the blunt head of his cock bounced against her clit. 

“Finally allowing me a position where I can speak, Basil?” he teased, murmuring into her ear in an echo of their time in the cellar. 

Basil squeezed his arse encouragingly, with a hint of nail he appreciated, and rolled her eyes. “And after all the trouble I went to to preempt your babbling nonsense.”

“It was torture,” Ratigan said in a self-pitying tone, “not to be able to give vent to my deep appreciation. Believe me, though I’d no opportunity to say as much at the time, I was not insensible of the compliment, my dear.” He traced her lips, and she kissed his thumb. 

“I’m terribly sorry to have denied you. Would you care to give me your evaluation of my performance, Professor?” Basil shifted her hips, pressing pointedly against him.

“More than adequate preparation. Adjusted well to an unforeseen development, compensating accordingly--mm, Basil.”

“And?” She stroked his tail, then slid a finger, slick with her own lubrication, against his entrance. 

“Obviously--inventive. An excellent performance, that shows great promise for the future--gently dearest, _gently_. Nails--that’s it. Oh, that’s certainly it. Basil, _God_ I worship you, I adore you, I love you.” He’d proposed marriage to her on numerous occasions, and he’d spoken of attraction, admiration and respect. But he’d never actually said before that he loved her. 

“Pádraic,” she murmured with strange, fierce tenderness, as though he were her violin concert, as feverishly intense now as she’d ever been in her desire to catch him, clutching him to her--caught, at last--and squeezing her eyes shut, flushing under her fur, embarrassed at and overwhelmed by her sentiment. “My own, my love.”

He finished with a snarl and slumped down over her, chest heaving, feeling he’d finally won. True, Basil had not actually agreed to marry him. She might well retreat into herself, after a decision to embrace him made in the flush of victory--Ratigan might find himself moving in retrograde, forced to tread carefully for some months. Still, this had been rapturous, and was enormously promising. He’d had no idea his affairs had stood in such good condition; Basil could play her hand so close to her chest, when she judged it proper. She’d said she loved him. Though it had been at a vulnerable moment, and though she very likely hadn’t meant it, or didn’t meant it as he did, he clung to it. 

“Oh no, I don’t think so.” Basil batted at his chest. “You are at the very least three times too heavy for that. Come on, on your back, there’s a good chap.” 

With a long-suffering sigh Ratigan flopped over. 

Basil made use of another cloth to briskly tidy herself and leant down to fetch the disheveled blankets. “You’re staying the night? If Judson finds you at breakfast, she’ll assume you came in at the door. I often consult over meals.” 

“I am not moving until I recover the use of my limbs. I expect I shall be some time.”

“Thank you, Captain Oates.” She turned out the lamp, laid down and paused for a moment. “We need to talk about--well, you. That criminal empire you have. We need to decide something, there.” 

Ratigan tensed, though in some ways this was precisely what he’d been angling at for years. He simply didn’t expect it to be a simple or pleasant discussion. “I’ve been attempting to force that conversation for three years. You’ve evaded me at every turn--a master conversational escapologist. At your leisure, Basil.”

“We can work something out,” Basil said, with an assurance he doubted she felt. “We must.”

“Precisely.” Because that last was the trick of it--he’d always knew they’d come to the painful point of discussing how much hard-earned success he’d have to give up, or transmute into new, more sustainable forms. He wasn’t pleased, but he was prepared.

“And I need you to properly take me--not now, obviously. I doubt even you could rise to the occasion at the moment. But I need to be certain you’re not going to be--disappointed by the experience, given that you’re not otherwise interested in it. I’m sorry. I know that wasn’t what you wanted.”

Ratigan rubbed his temples in exasperation. “You still honestly suppose I could be disappointed?”

“It’s important to me. I take the matter seriously.”

He waved a hand airily. “Then at your pleasure, of course.” It would slightly marr his ideal wedding tableaux--but then ‘leering at a wide-eyed, trembling, absolutely innocent Basil who begged him to make love to her’ had never _actually_ been in the cards, due to the involvement of an Actual Basil. He was far from averse to answering the invitation itself. Even if he did expect it would be recanted come morning.

“I’m exhausted,” Basil murmured. “Am I supposed to be exhausted? I feel exsanguinate. Exanimate. Ex--” 

“Go to _sleep_ , you menace.”

Basil sighed. “The love doth diminish e’en now. It’s just as mother said it would be. Where is the pillow talk? Where the sweet nothings?” 

He smiled in the dark, feeling simultaneously annoyed by and incredibly fond of her. “They’re waiting in the morning, my love.” 

“Oh really? Well then it was the lark, and not the nightingale--”

With a great groan he gathered Basil to him, throwing an arm, a leg and his tail over her. “Another word and I’ll nip you. Or roll on you. I am a most wicked, dangerous man, Basil. A criminal mastermind. I might do anything.”

Sighing and harrumphing, Basil settled down and, to Ratigan’s surprise, dropped off neatly before him, comfortable in his hold, sleeping the sleep of the just, about which he had heard so much. 

He must have followed her shortly after, because he awoke to a curtain being drawn back and bright day impudently entering the room, without any invitation from him.

“You can’t possibly want more sleep,” Basil said with what Ratigan thought was deeply unwarranted assurance. She was dressed in her fetching yellow waist coat and fawn trousers, and he hated her. It was far too bright, and she took the pillow he mindlessly pushed his head under away from him. 

“Monster,” he hissed. “If you’re a ‘morning person’, I rescind all vows.”

“Too late for that I’m afraid.” She popped onto the bed next to him, ruffling his hair in her most chipper, irritating fashion. “Breakfast,” she crooned. “Coffee. Great reservoirs of coffee. Kedgeree, ham and eggs getting cold on the sideboard, fresh--”

“Coffee,” he clutched at her hand manfully, as if hauling himself over the side of a cliff. “Coffee. Then tea, _strong_ tea--then further coffee.”

At the breakfast table, having finished a hearty repast, Basil glanced over at the unopened paper--one of many. She apparently got them all, which, he supposed, must be useful for her work. “I see Count Kruglolitsyy has prepared for the press some bon mots regarding the Boxer Uprising.”

Ratigan regarded the Times with bleary suspicion. “It’s too early for me to pour due scorn on Kruglolitsyy’s utopianism, I’m afraid.”

“Pity, I did anticipate you’d have deep reservoirs of scorn to pour.”

“Oh I do, but not a pitcher with which to dispense the libation--not until half ten at the earliest.”

“A Russian friend of mine knows the couple a little, socially. She tells me Sofia Kruglolitsyy calls her husband and her marriage ‘the work of her life’. I used to think her such a fool--she, by all accounts, a highly accomplished woman, so devoting herself to this union--productive in artistic, political and domestic directions as it obviously is. I think they’ve a dozen children, they make your parents look restrained. Now I wonder if the Countess doesn’t understand herself. She might have married more safely, found some man she’d struggle less _with_. Someone whose ideas were not so radical. With honor, she might have opted to quit the field, to give up on a man with a dubious past and character. To take no role in his reformation, to choose the easier avenue of condemning and abandoning him. I admire her choice, morally and emotionally, but still-- hers is a difficult task. A monumental one. Marriage certainly isn’t for cowards.”

This was not the sort of talk Ratigan liked to hear out of her--and certainly not before noon, when it was difficult to muster the dazzling arguments necessary to counter it. “Does her instructive story dissuade you from marriage generally? I can hardly credit it. You’re infinitely brave, Basil--I believe you’re never afraid of anything.”

Basil drummed her nails on the table. “I assure you, I am. If that were true, I shouldn’t be brave at all. It’s not the absence of cowardice that counts, but the surmounting of it.” Basil dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. Checked her watch.

“Well,” she remarked, standing, and then abruptly leaning down on her knees.

Ratigan looked on at this piece of eccentricity in mild perplexity, buttering his toast. “Have you dropped something?”

Basil coughed, fishing a box out of her jacket. “Now then. Pádraic Ratigan, will you do me--”

Stunned, he dropped his toast. “I have proposed to you over a hundred times--”

“Ninety seven. You very rudely didn’t let me finish. Will you do me the honor of becoming my husband?”

“That’s merely a matter of how you count it-- _over a hundred times_ , and yet _here you kneel_ , actually gazumping _my marriage proposal_. This is outrageous!”

“Your masculine prerogatives thrown open to question, your reason in disarray, yes yes. Please focus Ratigan, you are becoming engaged!”

“Am I!” He frothed. “You impudent--will _you_ marry _me?_ ”

“I asked first!” She answered. Ratigan opened his mouth to laugh mockingly, and Basil quickly added. “Today!” 

Pride warred with sense, and he bit out, “ _Yes_ , then. Certainly.”

“Excellent, then yes!” Basil tossed the box at him and he caught it. She stood, tugging at her waistcoat. “Enough of that, then. Oh don’t look so surprised. It’s not as though I’d sleep with you if I didn’t plan on bringing the matter to a conclusion.”

He flipped opened the box, eyeing the engraved, stoneless gold band critically. “This is--hm. Very old indeed. Is this French?”

“Yes,” Basil poured out the last coffee from the silver pot. 

“You can’t have afforded this.”

“Oh no,” Basil shook her head, “certainly not. Especially as it used to be in the Louvre. It’s my fee for the Belgium incident, in entire. That’s a war that didn’t happen. I thought you’d like that--or at least that it’d flatter your ego. I saw it and thought it suited you.”

“An entire--” A thought occurred to him. “The Belgium incident occurred almost a year ago.”

“Yes.” Basil sipped her coffee. 

“Then you--”

Basil waved her hand. “Of course I’ve known for some time how it might end with us--that I’d exchange one double life for another. And, man and wife being one flesh, should after a fashion retain my current bisexual state. One just has to test one’s conclusions to make sure they’re sound. Those minute and laborious investigations which form the solid basis on which brilliant edifices are reared, and all that. Now where’s mine? You always carry it with you on your person.” She made quick little ‘come hither’ gestures with her hand. “Give it over.”

Basil had never seen her ring, but it seemed she knew its silhouette well. He slid a box across the table towards her, and she flicked it open and nodded. It apparently confirmed her deductions. “Excellent. Shall we?” With a flourish, she slipped the ring on her finger, and he did likewise with his own. 

Basil took up and flicked open the papers, perusing the columns as though nothing had happened. Only the slight quirk she was failing to conceal at the corner of her mouth told Ratigan he was being baited. He patiently waited her out, until, mouth seizing, she collapsed in gales of laughter, letting herself be hauled into his lap. 

Attracted by the noise, Mrs. Judson rapped on the door. “All right in there, sir?”

“Perfectly Mrs Judson, thank you!”

“Do you need anything? Shall I come in?”

“Pray give me a moment, Mrs. Judson!” Basil managed. “I’m afraid I’m very much engaged at present.”


End file.
